#it just takes a few different iterations and the chapter 3 power creep as you slip your narrative bonds to get there

[golvio]

I'm also wondering if the ways you can "show love" to the Fury can change depending on your approach. Fury is about The Body, but you get to her from Tower by forcibly reminding her of her own mortality, breaking her view of herself as an absolute divinity. You get to her from Adversary by being hurt by her in a way you can't recover from, forcing her to have an existential crisis over what she considers to be her sole reason for existing.

I think Tower!Fury's going to be the one who more methodically takes you apart, then realizes that she was completely off the mark about what kind of goddess she was as she witnesses you tap into your Long Quiet powers whenever you're forcibly ejected from your body. Her framing herself as a singular, untouchable, very Catholic God-coded goddess was based on a mistaken impression of what you were due to getting off on the wrong foot, so part of her healing and learning to see you as an equal involves realizing she never actually "fell from grace," but was just changed by experience and shaken to the point where she felt "diminished" by having her worldview so radically challenged by your resistance to her will.

Adversary!Fury will lunge at you with a very Razor-coded "Let's Hurt Each Other!!!!!" However, I think that either she'll hesitate if she hurts you again, or maybe *she* will be the one who gets hurt in a way that she could've easily shrugged off as Adversary, but can't as Fury, now that she's very painfully aware of being inside of a flesh-vessel. Your bonding moment with her might involve healing her, or at least finding a way to stabilize her until Shifty can take her home. The Long Quiet is a deity of "life" and of preservation and stability, so it would make sense if his province was healing and the prolonging of life through treating injury and illness. Meanwhile, Shifty's domain is more violent due to the ways the body is made, unmade, and transformed through injury, birth, and death. There is something that you can do that ends up causing fury to reframe her worldview, realizing that she's not nothing without "her purpose," and that there's a big, wide world out there that's about more than just violence. That the body can be a utilitarian vehicle for the soul or an instrument of harm, but it can also be a source of pleasure and a way to learn about the world by experience.

It's like...they both feel violated and therefore take the form of a "fallen angel” to reflect how corrupted they/you felt they were in that moment where the existential crisis set in, but it wasn't because they were sexually abused (and thank god for the writers not going that route). They just had their sense of self completely destabilized by experiencing something that went completely counter to how they believed the world worked based on what they learned from their first encounter with you. Healing Fury and convincing her to leave with you, or at least lay down her arms, will involve a more conscious, deliberate reframing, until the cognitive dissonance subsides and she can start seeing things from your point of view. Either she realizes you are her equal and you have a lot to learn from each other, or she comes to respect your nonviolent approach and realizes that she's more than just "her purpose" as assigned by the narrative/your initial perception of her as your Adversary.

No matter what it ends up being, through that realization, she recognizes that she isn't "ruined," just changed. She's still her, no better or worse, just different. Once she understands that, she can come out of her pit of self-loathing and start building herself back up again.

(I'm also suspecting the "new ending" might be a First Princess-specific ending, like how Stranger got her own ending. But there are also a couple of other philosophical directions that haven't been explored, like what happens if you permanently die but she doesn't, or if there's something that can be done about the Narrator being stuck in his self-inflicted ironic hell.)

I could be completely off the mark about all of this, but I have no idea what to expect, and that makes the area ripe for wild speculation and imagination.

[annebrontesrequiem]

CLAMP Timeline BS: How xxxHolic and CCS are Connected

Major spoilers for xxxHolic, TRC, and minor-ish spoilers for Cardcaptor Sakura and Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card

Also it long

Backstory

Cardcaptor Sakura run: 1996-2000

xxxHolic run: 2003-2011

Clear Card run: 2016-present

What I have read: The entirety of xxxHolic

What I have watched: The entirety of Cardcaptor Sakura, the entirety of Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card, xxxHolic season 1

 Crackpot Theory Time

So I got the idea for this after seeing some post somewhere (I’ll try to look for the post later) something along the lines of “maybe Sakura in Clear Card will be so powerful she’ll be able to influence the TRC universe/help the members of the CLAMP universe.” Then I started thinking about how, though there have been many posts on the TRC/xxxHolic timeline, I haven’t seen an xxxHolic/CCS timeline. I’m sure it exists somewhere, but since I’ve got my own theories I’m not writing one myself.

This is less of a timeline and more of a “how are they connected”, basically I’m going to be going back through the anime and the manga and saying whether I think CCS and xxxHolic take place in the same universe, and whether or not they’re taking place at the same time.

Let’s start with the most stuff (and apologies the manga scans are ones I made myself so if they’re kinda wonky that’s why)

Also one day I’ll update this when I actually read TRC (lol)s.

Also some of these are a bit crazy.

 Plot Points

Since xxxHolic came second it’s unsurprising that the majority of the things I’m going to be discussing comes from this series. So I’m going to start by framing this around xxxHolic, dipping inThis is going to be a bit all over the place but since I’m focusing on a specific chapter it shouldn’t be too confusing.

1.      In Chapter 2 of xxxHolic we see the most references to Cardcaptor Sakura. Namely Watanuki and Yuuko have an argument about the plastic replica of the Clow Key that Yuuko owns.

2.      Now the version that Yuuko has is the first iteration of the key. That means that when Yuuko acquired it (whenever she did) it was most likely during the first part of Cardcaptor Sakura (although yes I understand in meta it’s because it’s the most iconic iteration). Then again the key has been around for a long time, as it’s the original iteration. It’s possible that Yuuko got a copy of it from Clow, or some point before Sakura got hold of it. Although that’d most likely have to be before Kero fell asleep for 30 years, and before the cards got into the Kinomoto house.

3.      Another thing to note is that Yuuko only has a prop version. Although you might use this to say CCS is a show in this version, it’s pretty obvious that this is just for a gag. Considering the fact Watanuki doesn’t recognize it, there’s little chance that CCS is a beloved kid’s show in the xxxHolic universe.

4.      This is further proven by Yuuko’s words: “…The one who owns the original now is the creep’s [Clow’s] blood relation, a cute young girl.” This is probably the best indicator that CCS is taking place at the same time of xxxHolic. Although it’s possible that CCS takes place in an alternate world/universe, that also seems unlikely. Although Yuuko never seems tied to the shop in the way Watanuki is in the latter half, there’s also (in xxxHolic) no proof that she’s jumping around worlds. Besides, it seems unlikely she’d bring it up to Watanuki in the present-tense if that were the case. Thus we can pretty safely say that Sakura is both alive and still a little kid in the xxxHolic world.

5.      Now the most confusing part in regards to the CCS/xxxHolic timeline is Watanuki’s existence himself. In Chapter 11 Watanuki and Yuuko go to see a fortune teller. During said interaction the fortune teller explicitly states: “Your parents have safely passed into the afterlife” after noting that they died in an accident. Now this could cause some issues, as we know not only that Watanuki’s parents are Sakura and Syaoran (from what I know it’s specifically their clone versions but again I haven’t read TRC so I could be wrong). This could point to two things, either A. This is just a lie or something that CLAMP retconned later, or B. Sakura and Syaoran are dead. Assuming that this isn’t just a retcon or a sort of lie (since Sakura and Syaoran clone’s weren’t actually dead at this point, I’m pretty sure in TRC they don’t even know about Tsubasa Li yet) we could explain this via Eriol. Eriol is confirmed to be the reincarnation of Clow Reed. As of such if we assume that there was another Sakura and Syaoran running around in this world (plz god no), then the accident which caused their death doesn’t actually mean that CCS happened way earlier. It just means that they might’ve reincarnated.

Random Exposition

I’m just going to be talking about technology and geography here

1.      Firstly I had to go back and check and unfortunately the name of Watanuki’s school doesn’t match with the name of Sakura’s school (or rather her brother’s old school). Cross Private School has nothing to do with Tomoeda. Although that could actually further point to them existing in the same timeline, since if they lived in the same place it’d be weird if they never ran into one another.

2.      Tomoeda is said to be close to Tokyo. In fact in the second season we see Sakura and the gang taking the train to Tokyo. Watanuki obviously lives in a city, or a very dense suburb, and in Chapter 5 he mentions that Ginza would take hours to walk to. Having lived in a very dense city myself once (Paris I miss you baby) I know that walking from one side of the other could theoretically take hours. Though I’m not sure how large Tokyo is and I have no real sense of distance, I’d guess that Watanuki lives either in some made up part of Tokyo, or in the suburbs directly connected to the city. As famous landmarks are never mentioned, it could be either or. He could even be from a neighboring city theoretically, although then it’d prolly take much longer to walk to Ginza.

3.      Lastly I want to talk about technology. In Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card we can clearly see that this is meant to take place in modern times, as Sakura has upgraded to an iphone, in keeping with the time. This definitely disproves CCS coming before xxxHolic, as nothing in xxxHolic suggests it takes place in the future. I also think that there’s no way xxxHolic comes before CCS for any real period of time, after all in Volume 1 there are many chapters dedicated to the woman who cannot stop using the internet. This too points to me that xxxHolic and CCS are running in conjunction to one another, or are at least only a few years off.

Conclusion

So this is all very crackpot and weird, but I do think it’s interesting to ponder. As that forum post said Clear Card definitely seems to be upping the scale of Cardcaptor Sakura, the magic is greater, the stakes seem higher, and characters such as Yuna D. Kaito point towards a storyline that seems more tonally in tandem with the greater CLAMP extended universe, as really ratcheted up by xxxHolic and TRC.

You could make the argument that CCS and xxxHolic are from different universes, though considering what I’ve written and read I don’t think you can argue that they’re utterly disconnected. Overall I’m still missing a huge piece of the puzzle, that being TRC as well as the rest of the Clear Card chapters. One day I’ll prolly remake this post, but until then I hope you enjoyed!